Dharma Talks

In this tender koan (from the Hidden Lamp) Quiyuan describes her awakening in terms of gestation and giving birth. It whispers quiet questions for everyone: what is meditation like for you? How do we take care of the embryo inside ourselves, and in each other? What is that moment when we feel completely stripped bare? What is that presence, pulsing and alive, that we hold and are held by?

The promise of the third season is whole-hearted practice without an agenda. The third season describes moments of kensho, when we deeply realize the emptiness beyond self. In the bicycle metaphor, it is the moment when we take the hands off the handlebars and know that we keep going. No choreography, no separate self, no words.

Openings take us by surprise: "Oh wait! What was that?" Seeing the world as alive, radiant and aware is not something to be engineered...